*Disclaimer - this episode was produced prior to Trumps inauguration on January 20th, 2025*

Asylum seekers and refugees at the U.S.-Mexico border face harrowing conditions, often forced to live in makeshift camps with inadequate access to basic necessities like clean water and sanitation.

Erin Hughes, a licensed professional engineer and founder of Solidarity Engineering, shares her journey of being inspired to help these displaced populations after hearing about their struggles through a podcast. The episode delves into the impact of policies such as the Migrant Protection Protocols, which have left many asylum seekers stranded outside U.S. borders, and highlights the humanitarian crisis that unfolds as these individuals wait for their asylum applications to be processed. Hughes recounts her experiences at the border, the diverse demographics of people seeking refuge, and the challenges faced by grassroots organizations trying to provide essential services. With a blend of empathy and urgency, the conversation sheds light on the complex interplay of politics and humanitarian needs, urging listeners to recognize the human stories behind the statistics.

Check out the show notes!

Takeaways:

• Thousands of people risk their lives each year seeking safety and new beginnings in the U.S.
• Asylum seekers face a lengthy and challenging process, often waiting in dire conditions.
• Conditions at makeshift camps include poor sanitation, leading to health issues like diarrhea and skin infections.
• The U.S. asylum process requires credible fear documentation, complicating the entry for many refugees.
• Erin Hughes' organization, Solidarity Engineering, addresses humanitarian needs at the border with engineering solutions.
• Many asylum seekers come from diverse countries, facing unique challenges on their journey.

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Before I start this episode, I want to share that we started production for season three of the Global Health Pursuit podcast prior to President Trump taking office on January 20th.

You may remember that some of his campaign promises would include tough action on immigration policies, border patrol, and cutting federal funding that safeguards the LGBTQ and marginalized populations.

And yes, on day one of his presidency, he signed an executive order that shut down an important app used by immigrants and asylum seekers at the border to set appointments with Customs and Border Patrol officers.

This app is called CBP1, Customs and Border Patrol 1, and as you can imagine, this left thousands of migrants stranded.

Now, even though this executive order has been put into place, I still want you to know about the situations and circumstances that refugees and asylum seekers were facing at the border.

We don't know what the next four years will mean for these people, but I think it's our responsibility to be informed by the people on the ground.

As we know, every year thousands of people from all over the world embark on dangerous journeys, and they flee their homes in search of safety and new beginnings for their families in the United States.

But the question is, what happens when they reach the US Mexico border?

How long do they stay at the border?

What is the process like?

And most importantly, what are the conditions like for these people and for their families?

If you've clicked on this podcast, you may already have strong views and feelings on who should or should not be let into the United States.

But for now, I ask that you set those feelings and views aside as you listen.

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Global Health Pursuit, the podcast where we explore the world's most pressing health challenges through a beginner's lens.

I'm your host, Hetal Bhman, a biomedical engineer turned social impact podcaster, and we are now in season three.

If you're watching on YouTube or Spotify, make sure to comment below to say hi.

Incorporating video podcasts as a one woman show has not been the easiest learning curve, but it's been a goal of mine, and I hope it reaches even more people because these issues are important, to say the least.

Okay, today's topic, Asylum seekers and refugees at the border and the story of one person who, after listening to a podcast, ironically was inspired to visit the border herself.

I couldn't have picked a more relevant topic in today's political climate, don't you think?

So let's jump right in.

After hearing that podcast, this American Life, I was like, I need to do something and I can do this, right?

If that's one thing that comes out of anyone listening to this.

If you are at the end of your open, you're so frustrated listening to the news, and you're just like, this sucks.

I feel so helpless.

You can do something.

Let me see how I can help.

Like, I know how to filter water.

That's Erin Hughes, licensed professional engineer, executive director and founder of Solidarity Engineering, a nonprofit organization that implements humanitarian engineering projects to address displaced populations in need.

Her background is in environmental engineering, water sanitation, hygiene, site infrastructure, and stormwater management.

A few years ago, she had been working at the Philadelphia Water Department, and Donald Trump had just come into office and put the migrant protection protocols into place.

The migrant protection protocols is a policy that was put in place that essentially forced asylum seekers to remain outside of the bounds of the United States while they applied for asylum in the United States.

So you had people from all over the world that were applying for asylum in the United States, but they had to stay outside of our borders.

And before that, that wasn't the case.

Right.

You could come to our border, tell the border patrol agent that, you know, I'm a refugee, I'm an asylum seeker.

I have credible cause.

They would then essentially allow you in while you applied, because the application process can take months, years, but you could do that within the relative safety of the United States.

But after the migrant protection protocols got put in place, people were forced to stay right outside our border.

I had heard that these makeshift refugee camps were forming at our United States border in Mexico on the Rio Grande River.

I actually heard it from a podcast, this American Life.

Yes, it's called the Outcrowd.

It was the first Pulitzer Prize ever given to audio journalism.

So it was kind of a big deal.

The interviewer is at one of these makeshift camps in Mexico, and they're interviewing this nurse who.

She's a volunteer with a different group.

And she was explaining how she was really frustrated that she kept on seeing.

Seeing these asylum seekers that were.

You know, they just.

They continuously would come to her with the same ailments, diarrhea, gastrointestinal issues, skin infections, eye infections, everything that relates to bad sanitation, drinking bad, contaminated water.

And the interviewer is like, well, what are you gonna do about this?

And at the time, she said, I don't know.

I guess we're just gonna have to Google it.

I heard that, and I was working for the Philadelphia Water Department, and I was like, hi, I know what to do.

Google it.

Yep, that's what she Said, so Erin made a few calls and got in touch with the organization down by the border and said, hey, we're here.

We can help.

And this is what they said.

And they're like, well, you know, we do healthcare.

We don't do engineering, but there's no engineers down here.

We could really use your help.

So I convinced my partner at the time.

I was like, let's go down to the border and help out at these camps.

This is amazing.

I find it so brave of her to make the decision to even go observe what is happening in a place like this, because once you arrive, it feels very different for everyone.

So it was really important for me to ask her this question.

Just give us a visual of what you saw.

So at the time, you're down in Matamoros, Mexico, you cross the bridge.

You're in Brownsville, Texas.

You walk across the bridge, and right at the base of the bridge, there's a park along the Rio Grande.

And at this park, there were thousands of people living in tents, people from all over.

Right.

So there were Nicaraguans, Guatemalans, El Salvadorians, Venezuelans, Cubans.

And the question I wanted to ask you, you know, when you think of, okay, we're going to be at the border, you're going to see a lot of Mexicans.

Well, not.

Right.

Like, what would you say the demographic was?

Like, you said, all of these other countries.

I think I heard in another interview you did people from China, like, even across the world.

Yeah.

How are.

How are they getting to this one spot?

That's actually one of the challenges we face a lot of is because there are people from all over.

The language barrier.

Like, if you're like, okay, I'm getting there with Spanish, and then you get an influx of Haitians, Ukrainians, or Chinese.

And I'm not entirely sure why, but they tend to.

I think it has to do with, like, the visa process that allows people to come in.

For example, like the Haitians.

For some reason, the Haitians are able to travel into Brazil really easily.

And so they will get into Brazil, and then they will travel by land up through Central America, through Mexico, and then they get stuck at the border.

Same with kind of, like, all of these people is that they're able to somehow figure out their visa situation in some of these, like, southern countries, and then they travel by land up, and then they get stuck at the border.

And, you know, I'm just going to use that same example of the Haitians going to Brazil.

Most of these Haitians, they are proper asylum seekers.

These people are escaping for their lives.

Most of them, they don't know anyone in Brazil.

They don't have family there.

They don't have family in any of these countries going up.

They have family and friends living in the United States.

So that is who they are looking to sponsor them.

So that's how our asylum process works.

These asylum seekers have sponsors that look after them while they are refugees.

And the sponsors.

Who would these sponsors be?

They can be friends.

They can be family.

I ended up sponsoring a family from Honduras after I met them at the camp.

You help them acclimate to their life in the United States.

You help them get a bank account and an apartment, jobs, stuff like that.

While they're going through all the process and everything, because it takes a really long time.

All of the asylum seekers at the border, they all have to download this app.

It's called CBP1, Customs and Border Patrol 1.

That's how they register for their appointment with Customs and Border Patrol.

And essentially, you have to take a picture of your face.

So these people need to have a smartphone with them to do all of that.

So they have to have a smartphone.

They have to have Internet access.

What?

And then some of these appointments that they get.

So then they'll get an appointment with CBP1.

CBP1 only hands out a certain number of appointments per day.

So everyone at the beginning of the day is trying to get on their phone, and then this app gets overwhelmed and crashes.

Oh, gosh, I can't even tell you.

This app is clearly the result of the lowest bidder.

For a long time, it couldn't register black people's faces, so they have to take a picture of their face.

And half of these people are Haitian or people of color and.

Yeah, and it wouldn't, like, register their face.

What?

Oh, my God.

It's wild.

Wild.

And so then, you know, a certain number of people will get appointments with CBP1.

These appointments can be anywhere from, like, a week out to three months, four months out.

And then when they actually do get to their appointment, they have to show that they have a credible fear of going home.

And it's gotta fit within these very specific parameters.

And only then are they allowed to enter the United States and continue with their process.

But you've got people that are stuck in these camps for months, years, that aren't getting their appointments.

And then there's a whole nother layer of certain countries will get appointments sooner than other countries.

So, like, for example, the Ukrainians.

I haven't seen any of the Ukrainians.

Stay at these camps for more than a few days.

And while they wait, they're forced to live in conditions with poor water, sanitation and hygiene.

The nurse had said, these patients are coming back to me with, you know, diarrhea, pink eye, all of these, like, very preventable.

What was the root cause of all of that?

So at the time everyone was living along the Rio Grande.

There was no wash facilities, like wash is water, sanitation, hygiene.

So there weren't any proper bathrooms.

A lot of times people were open, defecating upstream, and then they were bathing downstream, drinking the water downstream.

And so that was like causing most of these issues.

So there was a lot of work to be done.

And the UN wasn't there, the Red Cross wasn't there, these big international organizations that should have been there, unhcr, unicef, they were nowhere to be found.

Right.

So it really came down to these small grassroots organizations to provide for the most basic of human necessities.

Right?

A bathroom, clean water, a shower.

I think one of the even more interesting parts of this issue being categorized as a political issue and not a humanitarian one is because it seems like if this were to be a humanitarian issue, all of these big organizations would be down there in a heartbeat, right?

Absolutely.

But this is, it's a hundred percent manufactured.

It's just crazy because if it weren't for this xenophobic American policy that is keeping people at the border in these makeshift informal camps, that, that, that can't address the very basic needs of people.

If the US policy wasn't put in place, these people would be living with their family, with their brother, with their sister in law, with their mom or dad or son or daughter in the United States, with their sponsor, in a house with running water.

It's so interesting how like depending on who's in power, depending on if it's an election year, you know, the asylum seekers are definitely used as just pawns.

Most of those people, it was like a, it's like a media frenzy.

It was just like a circus.

He like had allowed for the people in that particular camp to enter the United States and essentially live with their sponsors and apply for asylum.

The old way.

When you say that it was like a circus, what do you mean by that?

It was all for show.

They wanted to get rid of that camp because that camp had gotten a lot of media coverage.

Media coverage around what, what was this?

So hype around that Camp.

Those asylum seekers had been waiting there for years.

Okay.

And so when Biden came into office, he was like, Trump did this terrible thing to these, to these people.

And look at how I'm, I'm going to address this and I'm going to fix this.

Not a month later, all of the infrastructure at that camp that Solidarity had helped build, we helped build playgrounds there.

We did a schoolhouse, stormwater management channels.

We had tons of gravel brought into the site to help manage the mud and the flooding.

We had built a soccer field.

We had really nailed down the water filtration devices.

We had three big aqua block water filtration devices.

We had built a shower block with gravity fed water.

Oh, wow.

And that was bulldozed.

No, everything except for the playground.

Everything but the playground.

Because they didn't want more asylum seekers showing up there because of the amenities.

And not a month later, the city just west of Matamoros was Reynosa.

Reynosa became the hub of all of these asylum seekers.

Thousands of people ended up at a park there.

And so we had to start over.

Okay, how did that make you feel?

I just need to ask.

I mean, yeah, it was really frustrating just seeing all of, you know, going from such hope.

But ultimately that was really exciting.

We saw these people that we had been with for the past year finally get allowed into the United States to finish their asylum process.

Having them bulldoze that camp, it was bittersweet.

It was like, okay, you know, they're bulldozing all of this work that we, that we did, but it's not gonna be necessary like this.

This problem's gonna be fixed.

Yeah.

And I thought that solidarity at that point was either going to dissolve or we were gonna shift into more of a emergency response type of organization.

Which we have done emergency response projects before.

Like we've gone down to Guatemala after they got hit by two back to back hurricanes.

We've gone to Sierra Leone to do WASH assessments with some partner organizations.

And I kind of thought that that's how we were going to pivot.

And then two months later, we're back at the border.

But now all of this stuff that we originally had for these people, now they're in a new location and we're just starting from scratch.

So just to put into perspective, how many people would you say were down there before they started letting people in?

I think there are probably less than a thousand people left in that camp when it was finally dissolved and they were allowed into the United States.

And then a few months later, when Reynosa started popping off, there was one particular site at the.

The main plaza.

And again, it's like right after you cross the bridge, you see this park and it's just full of tents just on top of each other.

There were a few hundred people there.

I think that climbed to almost 3,000 people at the height of that camp a few months later.

Everything at the plaza a few months later was bulldozed.

Just building thick skin.

At this point, it goes to show.

Like, it's such a.

It's such a unique situation because you aren't at a designated refugee camp.

You're not at this UN sanctioned refugee camp that is gonna be there for a long time, right?

You're in this really in between space that everything's gotta be temporary.

So I think we learned our lesson.

The definition of refugee is so it doesn't encompass everything now.

It really needs to be updated because being a climate refugee is not a thing, right?

If your village in Guatemala gets hit with a hurricane and ruins your crop yield, ruins your livelihood, and there's nothing for you there anymore, everything's been destroyed.

If you then try and leave your home and go live with your brother in Wisconsin, you don't count as a refugee.

But how are you supposed to go home?

There's nothing for you, your land has been destroyed.

It's going to take years for.

For your soil to come back, and what are you supposed to do?

And somehow that doesn't count.

And a lot of times then that compounds with.

All right, so now there's no industry there, but there's maybe a cartel.

And now they are pressuring you or your son to join them, and there's nothing else to get money from.

So either you join them or they extort you.

And it seems like this kind of thing happens very often.

Just like the situation that Aaron's friend and sponsee Dsan found himself in.

My friend Dsan, he's actually the guy who I'm the sponsor for.

He came from Honduras and he had been running a small, like a daycare kind of thing out of his church.

The cartel had been pressuring him.

They were trying to extort him for money.

And then they gave him an option you don't need to pay us money, but we need to be able to.

The word that he chose was, borrow some of the children during the day, okay, and we'll bring them back.

And he was like, absolutely not.

And after that, he was like, no, no, absolutely not.

It was after that that he needed to flee because these people would not let up.

And they were threatening him.

They were waiting outside of his house.

He couldn't call the police because the police were part of that group.

And what are you supposed to do when the cop car sitting outside your house is the gang member who's threatening your life?

He had to flee.

It's crazy.

Gang violence.

Not one of the approved things to call yourself a refugee.

Okay.

So I went to look up what it means to be a refugee on the USCIS website, and this is their definition.

Under United States law, a refugee is someone who is located outside of the United States, is of special humanitarian concern to the United States, demonstrates that they were persecuted or fear persecution due to race, religion, nationality, political opinion or.

Or membership in a particular social group is not firmly resettled in another country, is admissible to the United States.

And refugee does not include anyone who ordered, incited, assisted, or otherwise participated in the persecution of any person on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.

It kind of seems a little bit vague and up for debate, especially bullet number three.

There you have it.

He was allowed into the United States because he lived in that camp in Matamoros to finish his asylum process, and I was gonna be his sponsor.

It took a year and a half, almost two years.

He was recently deported because he didn't qualify.

He was deported to Honduras.

Yes.

He's now living in Mexico because he can't be in.

He can't go back.

Can't go back.

And to think how many stories like that are in those camps.

Everybody has a crazy story.

Everybody is escaping for.

For some reason.

I remember I.

When I first started hearing about all of these stories, I would get so upset, and I would come home and, yeah, they would really affect me.

And then I would feel bad.

I'm like, why do I feel so bad?

That didn't even happen to me when I had this great life.

It took someone to be like, Erin, that's called empathy.

Yes.

I was like, oh, right.

You don't need to feel dumb for empathizing with these people.

And it's also interesting because people are like, you need to feel so grateful for your love life and all of that.

And it's like, you know what?

Right now I feel really bad.

When you started Solidarity Engineering, did you know that you were going to create this nonprofit and build this mission out and recruit a couple people?

What was it like?

You were working in the full time job.

Right.

I had no idea that this is what was going to come of this.

When I quit my job at the Philadelphia Water Department, they have a very flexible rule that you can come back within a year and they'll like, kind of save your position for you.

I was like, like, I'm probably going to end up back at the Water Department.

This will be interesting.

Few months or up to a year, and then, you know, I'll be back back in Philly.

After a few months down there, my two other co founders, Krista Cook and Chloe Rastatter, they came down and we met and we were working on projects together, and they called me up one night.

They were like, out at a bar.

They were like, erin, it's so crazy.

Because all these conversations always happen out at some bar or some restaurant.

Yeah, I love it.

They were like, erin, we have this great idea.

Like, you know how the three of us have been working together so well the past few months, and we're the only engineers that have shown up.

There's just so much that needs to be done.

What do you say?

Let's do it for real.

Because at that point, we had just been.

I think I had started like a GoFundMe to fund some of these projects.

And we kept running into the issue of, oh, if we just had the proper 501C3.

Yeah.

A proper nonprofit, and we could get grants, you know?

And then.

And they were like, we have this great idea.

And I was like, all right, sign me up.

And they were.

And they were so funny.

They were like, don't you need to check with your husband first?

And I was like, oh, right.

Yeah.

I was like, oh, right.

I guess I should inform him of this huge life changing.

He's so supportive, though.

He was like, yes.

Like, this is.

This is the thing you gotta do.

If anyone is an engineer, contact me.

If anyone's a health professional, you know, we've had nurses and everything help out.

In addition to our water, sanitation and hygiene projects, we're currently designing and building a playground.

We have a women's health initiative.

We have a team down there right now that is teaching, like, preteen girls about their menstrual cycles and distributing menstrual supplies.

Today they were at a hospital in Reynosa passing out maternity kits with newborn diapers and maternity pads and prenatals and everything.

And specifically to the asylum seeker women that were giving birth at this hospital, or low income women that, you know, once they leave the hospital, they're not going to have a diaper for their baby.

So we were able to, we're able to do that.

Do you recruit volunteers?

Yes.

Yeah, we take volunteers, take professionals, we take amateurs.

No one's an amateur at this point.

You know, it's just you go in and honestly, first thing you do, listen, that's it.

How can people get involved with Solidarity Engineering?

Go to solidarityengineering.org There is like a contact form on there that's we're a really small team, so I'll probably be the one responding to you if you reach out that way.

The biggest hurdle that we come across is funding.

That's by far the biggest thing is like getting these projects funded month to month.

You know, the amount of water that we're providing for people, the amount of porta potties that we can rent, anything, it all comes down to donations.

So there's also a way to donate on our website.

That's like a really big one is funding.

That's our number one stopper.

So, yeah, so donate, volunteer, reach out.

There's a ton of stuff that we're working on that we always need help with.

Yeah.

And if you work with a corporate entity and you know someone who might have decision making power in terms of where to allocate your giving, give them a thought.

Because this could be really, really.

That could just change so many lives.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah.

Corporate sponsorship would be huge.

Erin, this has been so eye opening.

Thank you so much for this conversation.

Thank you.

Thanks for having me.

Now that Donald Trump is back in office and has put these executive orders into place, I reached out to Aaron at the end of January to get her perspectives on how things have changed.

This is what she said.

The shelters and camps that Solidarity Engineering works at have had relatively low populations the past few months.

Only about 250 to 600 people at each location.

But the Mexican authorities have warned us that we need to be ready for thousands of deportees in two to three months.

They aren't offering any resources or funding, they're just warning us.

So we're trying to use this time to prepare as much as possible.

We're still handling a ton of the wash and infrastructure needs.

We're still teaching a weekly STEM class, but now we're also constructing a large solar electrical system at one of the shelters.

Things seem to be constantly changing, and every day we seem to be in another meeting getting more and sometimes conflicting information from authorities and partners.

It's making it hard to figure out the truth and plan for what's to come.

Things are constantly changing and I think that this is the theme for the time that we're living in right now.

So if this is something that interests you, or if you have questions for Erin, feel free to put them in the comments below.

If you're listening on YouTube or Spotify.

And who knows, maybe in a couple months we'll do a Q and A episode with Aaron.

But in the meantime, thank you so much for listening to this episode.

Make sure to check out Solidarity Engineering and let me know if you connect with Aaron.

All of the links and information are in the show notes.

Also, did you like this new format?

Yes, no?

Maybe if you loved it.

Make sure to leave me a five star review on Apple and Spotify.

And now that I'm doing video podcasts, make sure to find me on YouTube as well.

If you think it needs some improvement, shoot me an email@hetallobalhealthpursuit.com I would love to connect.